1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to color space transformation of RGB video.
2. Description of Related Art
Data relating to color information, such as color images, can be communicated to a broad range of devices, such as, for example, cathode ray tube monitors, televisions, scanners, digital cameras and printers. However, these devices typically utilize numerous different formats and methods of handling the color information. Thus, color information communicated to a certain device may not be in the appropriate format to be utilized by that device. Communicating improperly formatted color information may result in the device incorrectly mapping the color information or even the device being unable to utilize the color information at all.
It is therefore desirable to enable a device, that is only able to handle a specified format of color information, to handle another format of color information that is at least initially different from the specified format. In other words, it is desirable to enable the communication of a first format of color information to a device that is only able to handle a second and different format of color information.
For example, a common format of color information is RGB video. It is therefore desirable to provide methods and apparatus for converting the RGB video into other formats, such as, for example, Lab video, YCbCr video, with or without gamma correction, and/or Srgb video (scanner independent RGB) with or without gamma correction. The apparatus and methods of the invention can use look-up tables to hold data for a non-linear portion of the Lab conversion process and/or to hold data for gamma correction curves.
The invention therefore provides the advantage of increasing the flexibility of image information communication by enabling devices to handle image information that had not been initially formatted to be compatible with the devices. The invention thereby increases the amount of image information that can be handled by various devices.
These and other features and advantages of this invention are described in or are apparent from the following detailed description of various exemplary embodiments of the systems and methods according to this invention.